A first encounter with alphabet soup provided opportunity for a touch of the wit he knew Katharine especially would appreciate:
I was a little astonished and disturbed the other evening, when I sat down to dinner to find my soup which was a sort of noodle soup, turning into all sorts of curious forms and even letters of the alphabet. I began to think I had the “jim jams.” On close investigation I found that the dough had been run through forms so as to make the different letters of the alphabet and figures, too! It was like looking into the “hell box” of a printing office, and was all the more amusing because every mouthful of soup you take out, brought up a new combination.
Progress at the Bollée factory was hardly improving, however. “I have to do all the work myself as there are no drawings to show anyone how things go together, and explanations take more time than doing things myself.
I have a man but he is not a first class mechanic; he has no invention or initiative, and his vocabulary is limited. When I say to him, “Hand me the screwdriver,” he is liable to stand and gawk or more often rush off as though he really understood me, and it is only after I have waited a long time and finally got it myself that I realize that he does not understand the special meaning of the word “hand” as I used it.
Most of my time has been spent on things I should not have to do at all. . . .
So far I have the main surfaces [of the wing] together and wired with new wires in a number of places. The skids are on and the engine is mounted and adjusted ready to run with the jump spark magneto in place. I have yet to put on the transmission and screws [propellers] which should be a small job. But I have the front rudder and framing and wiring yet to do and also the rear rudder.
Those who worked with him at the factory marveled at his meticulous craftsmanship, how he would make his own parts when needed, even a needle if necessary, and how at the sound of the factory whistle he would start or stop working just as they did, as though he were one of them.
On the evening of July 4, at about six o’clock, Wilbur, contrary to his usual work pattern, was still on the job. Only Léon Bollée remained on hand to keep him company. Having by then mounted the engine, Wilbur was standing close by, his sleeves rolled up, giving it a speed test, when suddenly a radiator hose broke loose and he was hit by a jet of boiling water. His bare left forearm took the worst of it, but he was scalded as well across his chest.
Bollée eased him to the floor and ran for help. “Fortunately we had picric acid in the factory’s pharmacy,” he would report to Hart Berg, “so that in less than a minute after the accident he was swathed in bandages soaked in picric acid.”
Bad as it was, the press, as usual, made the accident sound still worse, and for the family at home Wilbur, as usual, made light of it, spending much of a letter, written three days later, describing how the local physician went about tending the wounds as would a horse doctor. Nonetheless, Wilbur insisted, all was practically healed, the pain gone, when in fact it would be a month before he could use his left arm and the stress he was under had been greatly compounded.
Yet despite everything, by the first days of August he was seeing to the finishing touches on a machine reconstructed from the smashed and broken remains of the original, an airplane that was thus different from those he and Orville had built at home and one he had never yet flown. Testing it, even under ideal conditions, could be highly dangerous. Besides it had been three months since his last flight and that had ended in a crash.
It was nearly dark, the evening of August 6, when Wilbur, Léon Bollée, and Hart Berg folded back the front framing of the Flyer, set a couple of wheels under the skids, hitched the whole affair to Bollée’s stately automobile, and hauled it down the road to the Hunaudières racetrack five miles to the south. There it was put away in a shed, and to Wilbur’s delight the press was never the wiser. For all the hovering, all the surveillance by reporters, none had taken notice.
To keep guard over the plane Wilbur would sleep beside it that night and the nights to follow. The shed was much like those at Kitty Hawk, except here there was a privy and an outdoor hose for bathing. In addition, a small nearby restaurant served “very good meals,” and at a farmhouse not more than a hundred feet from the shed, he could get milk and enjoy visits with a small boy of five or six who spoke some English and had all the appearance of “a truthful little chap.”